Chapter Twelve

The first day of his Christmas education started off easy. He got up around six, since he was still unable to sleep in for the life of him, gathered up his soggy wrinkled clothes and took them up to the garage, determined to wash them, even if it killed him. Everything he owned didn’t even make up a full load and Jordan felt bad about wasting detergent and electricity, but still, it had to be done.

When he finished the laundry, he took the bundle back downstairs to the basement where he took a nice, long, lukewarm shower without the assistance of any orderlies or nurses. It felt like heaven.

After he’d cleaned up, shaved, and gotten dressed in clothes that were fresh out of the dryer, Jordan was feeling a whole hell of a lot better about life in general. He wandered upstairs once more and followed the scent of coffee into the kitchen. Noah was leaning over the island with a mug in hand. He paused with the mug pressed to his lips and gave Jordan a long, lingering look.

“You clean up well,” he said, clearing his throat.

Jordan glanced down at his body in surprise. His once-red flannel was now faded to a dirty pink and his undershirt was scratchy and threadbare. His jeans had to have been at least eight years old. They had random holes in the knees, thighs, and crotch, most of them patched with random scraps of fabric that he’d taken from Maddie’s great aunt.

“Uh, thanks?”

The corner of Noah’s mouth twitched, as he lifted his mug and asked Jordan if he wanted one.

“Yes please,” Jordan said, walking over to join him. He’d never done any hard drugs and only ever drank on special occasions, but man was he addicted to coffee. It was probably the source of about half of his daily calories. That’s what happened when you worked yourself literally to the bone every day with little to no rest.

“So, uh, what are your plans for the day?” Jordan asked after taking his first glorious sip. He wanted to know how best to stay out of the way.

“Well I figured I’d let Lucy decide when she gets up.”

Jordan furrowed his brow.

“But doesn’t she have school?”

Noah shook his head.

“Nope. Yesterday was her last day. Now she’s officially on winter break.”

“Oh,” Jordan said. He didn’t know why he was so surprised. Christmas was only nine days away, but he’d already mentally prepared himself to spend the day alone with Noah. Lucy was really sweet and all, but part of him was just a little bit disappointed.

“I know she can be a lot to handle,” Noah said, picking up on his discomfort. “But she adores you. She really does.”

Jordan gave him a small smile.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just not really great around kids, you know?”

Noah laughed and clapped Jordan on the back.

“You’re doing fine. Besides, Lucy’s not exactly your typical eight year old.”

Jordan nodded and the two of them took their coffee into the living room where Noah put on the morning news. Noah watched with rapt attention, as if he couldn’t help but take in every last detail of what was going on with the world. Jordan, on the other hand, felt uneasy about it. Part of him was terrified that they would break in with news of another mass shooting any minute.

A tired and sleep-rumpled Lucy came bounding down the steps an hour or so later during the hockey recap. She seemed like the exact opposite of the little girl that Jordan had hung out with yesterday. Her eyes were droopy, and her mouth was set in a hard line. Her outfit was cute, but she was wearing mismatched socks and one of her pigtails was significantly lower than the other. She made a beeline for her father without even acknowledging Jordan’s existence. Noah scooped her up into his arms and let her bury her face in his chest.

“Couldn’t sleep again, huh Bugs?” he said, stroking the back of her head.

“Mmmm,” Lucy mumbled.

“More nightmares?”

Lucy lifted her head and nodded. She punctuated the gesture with a yawn.

Noah sighed and wrapped his arms around her even tighter.

“I’m sorry baby girl. Do you want to go back and talk to Dr. Jefferson some more?”

Lucy pulled out of her father’s grasp and fervently shook her head.

“No. That lady makes me feel weird and her office always smells like fish.”

Jordan’s heart gave an uncomfortable pang. It wasn’t fair that Lucy was having nightmares and having to see a therapist over this. She should be sleeping in and enjoying her time off. It was clear from his tense posture and tight voice that Noah was feeling the same way.

“Okay,” he told her. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

Lucy clung to her dad for a little while longer before snagging the remote and sitting down between him and Jordan. She turned on some colorful cartoon that Jordan had never even heard of and slowly swayed in time with the theme music. Jordan had never been one for cartoons, even when he was young, but he found himself getting sucked into the plot. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the two girl characters in the show—both of them anthropomorphic animals—seemed to be in a relationship. He hadn’t realized that gay relationships were so normal now that they had even made it into children’s media. It was honestly really nice to see.

“So whatcha wanna do today Bugs?” Noah asked during the first commercial break. “We still gotta show Jordan what the Christmas season is all about.”

Lucy perked up a little at this.

“Could we go ice skating?” she asked.

“I don’t think Jordan can do ice skating baby. He’s still hurt.”

“Oh, right,” Lucy said. She scrunched her eyebrows together in concentration. “Maybe we can bake a bunch of cookies and then go give them to the homeless people like we did with Grandma last year. And then, later, when it gets dark outside, we can go see the lights?”

Noah flashed a huge grin at his daughter.

“That’s a perfect idea Bugs! Jordan, what do you say?”

Jordan reached up to scratch the back of his neck.

“Well, I’m not much of a baker…” he began.

“That’s okay,” Noah said. “I’ve got all my mom’s old recipe binders in the kitchen. All you’ll have to do is dump things into a bowl.”

“And mash ‘em all together!” Lucy added, clapping her hands together in front of her.

Jordan looked back and forth between their smiling faces and knew that there was no way he was getting out of this. Already, he wasn’t too jazzed about the whole Christmas thing in general, but the idea of handing out cookies to homeless people felt a little bit, patronizing. Especially since he himself was only one small step removed from being one of them. He couldn’t very well explain that to them though, at least not without sounding like a complete and utter dickwad.

“All right,” he said, plastering on a paper thin smile. “Let’s do it.”

Noah set about fixing Lucy’s hair so that it was all pulled back and out of her face in one expert ponytail. Then he sent her into the kitchen to grab grandma’s recipe book while he pulled out an actual stereo and a stack of CDs from one of the hall closets. Noah blew dirt off the device and brought it with him into the kitchen. He handed the stack of CDs over to Jordan and told him to take his pick.

Jordan shuffled through them. They were all Christmas albums with the same tired songs redone and recycled by various pop singers across the past three decades. He really didn’t want to listen to any of them, but he eventually settled on the Broadway stars version, hoping that would at least bring a little variety. Noah smiled at his choice and put the disc into the relic of a machine. A few seconds later, a big, bold, and dramatic voice was shouting at them to let it snow.

Lucy started squirming and dancing in place and Noah mouthed the words as he leafed through the giant recipe binder. When he settled on the one he wanted, he brought the book over to the island and spread it out across the flat surface. Then he lifted Lucy up onto the counter and placed a silver mixing bowl on her lap. Jordan looked down at the recipe card. Scrawled across the top in messy brown marker were the words “Marcy’s Damn Good Snickerdoodles.”

True to his word, Noah did all the measuring and all Jordan had to do was dump ingredients into the bowl at appropriate times. Lucy was reading the steps to them, but she abandoned that role completely when the stand mixer came out. She wielded the gadget with manic glee, splattering batter all over the place. Then they’d have to pause so they could lick the beaters clean. This also meant that they had to wash them between batches, of course. They went through this procedure multiple times. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The first couple of batches didn’t turn out right. They were burnt beyond repair, and this fact irked Jordan even more than the unsavory music. He absolutely hated wasting food, hated it with his entire being. He knew what it felt like to be so hungry that all you wanted to do was lay down and sleep. He also knew what it felt like to be so poor and desperate for money that you couldn’t do just that.

But Lucy and Noah didn’t seem bothered by it. In fact, they were laughing as if their cookie misfortune was the funniest thing in the world. Jordan didn’t get it. Their easy smiles were so foreign to him. It made him miss his uncle surprisingly, with whom every happy moment was precious and hard-won. People like Noah and Lucy, they went through life as if there were an endless well of joy coming from inside of them. If Kenny were here, he’d make fun of them for it, not in a mean way or anything, just a subtle rolling of his eyes as if to say, can you believe these two? And Jordan would laugh because he understood exactly where his uncle was coming from.

Jordan did his best to shake off the sadness for Lucy’s sake, and eventually they started cranking out some snickerdoodles that were worthy of the damn good moniker. Once they had about sixty of the cinnamon dusted morsels cooling out on the counter, they moved onto molasses, chocolate chip, and then shortbread cookies. Each of them was warm, gooey, and more delicious than the last. So at least there was that.

After all the cookies were baked, the three of them went their separate ways to get cleaned up. When they regrouped, they spent another hour and a half aesthetically arranging the cookies onto individual red and green paper plates and then covering them in plastic wrap. By the time they were done, there was a mountain of plates that Noah quickly piled into a laundry basket and put in the backseat of the car, right next to Lucy.

As Noah drove them to the nearest homeless shelter, the sun was starting to go down, casting a dusky haze over everything and causing the temperature to plummet. According to the vehicle’s display, it was only nineteen degrees. Jordan was glad they were handing out cookies at the shelter and not to random homeless people on the street. He couldn’t imagine anyone surviving for very long in this kind of weather.

The shelter was very small and unassuming from the outside. In fact, the only thing marking it as a shelter and not just a regular house was the sign out front. Noah parked as close to the door as he could and carried the cookies inside with Jordan and Lucy on his heels. The inside of the building was very industrial, a couple dozen cots and cubbies lining the walls. That was about it. From the looks of it, the shelter was just now opening for the night, but the beds were starting to go fast. There were even some cases where he saw entire families squished onto a single cot, thus staking their claim over it.

The whole cookie exchange honestly wasn’t as bad as he was expecting it to be. Since they’d taken the time to prepackage everything beforehand, all they had to do was walk around the room and hand out the plates. The reactions ranged from surprise and genuine gratitude all the way to confusion and begrudging acceptance.

Jordan had to admit that there was a really nice feeling attached to working really hard on something just for the sake of giving it over to someone who needed it more than you did, but it also served as a painful reminder of his own circumstances. As nice as Lucy and Noah were, he couldn’t stay with them forever. He eventually had to get back to work and figure out how to live on his own again, and try as he might, there was still a part of him that couldn’t help but feel like this was the only potential future he had to look forward to; desperate, homeless, and completely dependent on other people’s kindness. It was a sobering thought that stayed with Jordan all the way through the rest of the evening, even after they left the homeless shelter and started wandering around the suburbs looking at Christmas lights.

Lucy and Noah had taken him to one of their favorite spots, which was two giant houses standing side by side, each of them covered in so many lights and inflatable decorations that the house’s true facade was no longer visible. Jordan couldn’t help but wonder what the story was here. Like, maybe the two houses were owned by the same people for the sole purpose of showy decorations, or maybe they were just regular old neighbors who were really competitive with each other and had thus taken the Christmas light battle to a whole new level. Regardless, he’d hate to imagine their electricity bills.

The houses, as one would imagine, were quite the spectacle, literally stopping cars in their tracks and encouraging people to step out and get a closer look. The sidewalks and driveways in front of both houses were crammed full of people. Lucy was skipping along in front of Noah and pointing out the various colorful characters, one of which was a Santa Claus literally poking his head out of an inflatable outhouse while presumably taking a shit. Only in America, Jordan thought.

As impressive as the lights were, Jordan got bored of it pretty quickly. That probably had to do with the fact that he was sad, contemplative, and now freezing cold as well. He needed new base layers and thermal underwear. Something about being frozen and then unfrozen seemed to have lessened their effectiveness. Go figure. Still, Jordan didn’t complain. He just gritted his teeth, stuffed his hands as deep into his pockets as he could, and tried to focus on the lights. Alas, that eventually started giving him a headache and he was forced to people watch instead.

Amid the sea of gawkers, there were several other kids around Lucy’s age. While most of them were busy staring up at the houses with their eyes wide and their jaws unhinged, there was this particular pair of boys, most likely brothers, standing a few feet away who clearly couldn’t give a rat’s ass. They kept drifting away from their family and pushing and shoving each other. As Jordan watched, the smaller one stooped down and started working a clump of snow in his gloved hands. He waited a few seconds for his brother to get a few good feet away from him, then as quick as a whip, he wound up his arm and lobbed the snowball square into his brother’s back. The impact of the projectile made a loud, wet, slapping noise that reverberated through the air and momentarily drew all eyes in that direction.

Jordan felt a phantom jolt of pain in his upper chest. It was remarkable how much the noise sounded like a gunshot. He took a second to get his breathing under control and then glanced down at Lucy. She had gone white as a ghost and was staring over at the two boys without really seeing them. She was in a different place entirely. Jordan licked his chapped lips and placed a grounding hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “You’re here, with us. Looking at Christmas lights. You’re safe Lucy. Everything is okay.”

Lucy blinked a few times and then nodded, but there were already icy tears clinging to her cheeks.

“I want to go home,” she whispered.

Jordan nodded and grabbed hold of her tiny hand as they went to alert Noah, who was still standing with his back turned, taking pictures of the lights as if nothing had happened. Jordan tugged on one of his sleeves to get his attention. Noah turned around slowly. The enthusiasm in his eyes died the moment he saw Jordan’s face. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. Jordan explained what had happened in a quiet, detached voice. Noah bit his lip and gave a stern nod.

“Come here Bugs,” Noah said. Lucy let go of Jordan’s hand and allowed her father to scoop her up. She buried her face in his shoulder and stayed like that all the way to the car. Jordan sat in the backseat with her on the way home.

Back at the house, it took Noah a good hour to calm Lucy down and convince her to get ready for bed. Afterward, he came downstairs looking drained and at least ten years older. He sat down on the couch next to Jordan and immediately hid his head in his hands. Jordan took a good long look at him, an overprotective dad with no idea what to do, and suddenly felt horrible about his own behavior. He’d spent so much of the day focused on himself; how bad his life was and all the things he was going to have to do to fix it, how uncomfortable he felt, how much he didn’t like the music or the cold or the traditions. Meanwhile, Noah and Lucy, both of whom had also survived the shooting and had plenty of their own hangups about it, had tried their very best to put that aside for his sake. So that he could finally, for once in his life, have a good Christmas.

Jordan took a deep breath and placed his arm around Noah’s shoulders. Noah gratefully leaned into the touch. Jordan made a vow from that moment on that not only was he going to get over himself and have the special holiday that everyone wanted him to, but he was also going to do his very best to make sure Lucy had an amazing Christmas as well.